Truce
by joanhello
Summary: This story was inspired by the first chapter of "Code: Safeword" by Setepenre-Set", an AU in which Megamind kidnaps Roxanne Ritchi, as in the movie, but then she seduces him and the rest of the movie never happens. This starts out with the same idea, but is told (mostly) from Metro Man's point of view. Warning: crimes including murder and child prostitution.
1. Chapter 1

Metro Man was having a great Metro Man Day. After his speech, there were testimonials from the recently retired chief of police who'd worked with him for years, the fire chief, the governor (obviously there to borrow a little audience attention in advance of the upcoming election), his old elementary school teacher, a couple of people whose lives he'd saved, and the president of his fan club. Then there was a photo session, then autographs and selfies with fans. He was just thinking that, much as he was enjoying himself, he really ought to wrap it up and go get a meal before his interview at KMCP, when his phone rang. It was Frank Bonnin, anchor man and senior editor of KMCP News.

"Is Roxanne Ritchi with you? Her cameraman said she disappeared several hours ago, unexpectedly, with no explanation, and left her purse in the van."

"No, she isn't with me, and it's not like her to forget her purse. It sounds like she may have been kidnapped by Megamind again." The hero had been pleasantly surprised that Megamind hadn't tried to crash the party after breaking out of prison earlier today. Maybe something had gone wrong with his latest invention. In that case, she could be in real danger. "I'll have a look around for her."

"Please let me know what you find out. And thank you."

"No problem. Talk to you later." He ended the call. "Sorry, citizens," he said to the crowd around him, "but duty calls." There was general moan of disappointment as he rose into the air.

At the top of Metro Tower, he perched and closed his eyes. Hearing her voice from this distance wasn't difficult for him, but picking out hers from among all the voices currently speaking in the city required going into a kind of altered state. After less than a minute, he recognized her.

"Sushi?" she asked. "Doesn't Minion get weirded out by sushi? I mean, being a fish himself?" By the time she finished speaking, he knew where she was: in her apartment. But her question could only be directed to Megamind. He turned his X-ray vision toward her building.

Roxanne was there. She was barefoot, wearing her familiar pink bathrobe over a red corset and matching panties, sitting at her kitchen counter eating pizza straight from the box. Megamind was sitting next to her, also eating the pizza. He was wearing only his watch.

"Well, first of all, Minion is not a true fish," the blue alien replied. "He is... well, explaining that would require explaining our entire taxonomic system. You can ask him yourself if you're curious. Secondly, he is a carnivore. He eats less intelligent species of fish. We eat less intelligent species of mammal." He picked a disc of pepperoni off his slice, held it up for a moment, then popped it in his mouth. "It's no more weird for him than for us." Looking around the apartment for some way to explain this strange scene, Wayne discovered Megamind's costume, along with Roxie's red dress, shoes, stockings and underwear, on the bedroom floor.

"Us? Are you a mammal?" The covers had been cleared off the bed, and there were ropes wound into the headboard and footboard. Had he tied her up, or started to and then been distracted?

"Yes. Mammals are actually pretty common in this galaxy. Of the fourteen known intelligent species, eight are mammals, all originating from planets that have more or less the same range of species as Earth. This is clear evidence that they were all planted during some previous era and then nudged every few thousand years to keep their evolutionary processes parallel. The name of the phenomenon translates, more or less, as the Mammalian Diaspora."

"Wow. Okay, at some point I definitely want to know more about that, but closer to home, does that mean the condom wasn't just for disease prevention?" Wayne glanced back to the bedroom. There was a used condom in the wastebasket.

"It does. We're far enough apart that some genetic tinkering would be advisable, the kind I could easily do myself, to ensure healthy offspring, but accidental conception of nonviable or marginally viable offspring is all too likely." Green eyes gazed into blue with a look of worry and some slight yearning. "Is this... good news for you?"

"It's not bad news, but this is only our first date. I need a good long time of getting to know you better before I make a decision like that."

A glow of delight spread over his face. "You want more dates? Like this one?"

"Like this one but with more planning. Why don't - oh, damn it." Her shoulders slumped in irritation.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

"My calendar is on my phone, which is in my purse, which is still in the van."

"Oh, dear. Are you sure it's not back at Evil Lair?"

"It's not. I keep it in the van when I'm being filmed, and I was kidnapped just after we finished filming my Metro Man Day piece. No big deal. I'll get it when I go to do the interview with Wayne. Tell you what. Why don't you give me your number and when I get a chance, I'll call you?"

"Er-"

"Is that a problem?"

"Well, er, you see, Minion has always handled the telephony. He makes the calls and answers them. He only calls me to the phone if there's something I need to deal with personally. So I can't give you my number because I don't... actually... know it." He pulled his head down between his shoulders in almost a caricature of embarrassment. "Sorry."

"Hey, it's not that strange not to know your own phone number. People don't usually call themselves. Tell you what. Why don't I give you my number and you can call me? I should be finished up at work by seven thirty. In the meantime, I need a shower." Setting down her slice, which by now was little more than crust, she stood. "Care to join me?" she asked with a wink and a smile.

"Very much," the blue man replied, starting to rise. Metro Man looked away out of his habitual respect for citizens' privacy.

Their first date, huh? He started thinking. If Megamind had intended to call him out today and been sidetracked by Roxie, maybe this would become a regular thing. Maybe... and with that thought, a dream blossomed in his head, a dream he hadn't even known he had.

The end of the Game.

Until this moment, he hadn't realized how sick of it he was. The intrusion, inevitably timed to spoil a moment of good feeling; the trickery to be negociated; the battle; the rescue. Only the acclaim afterward held any appeal for him, and that now seemed to be his permanently. He'd still have to show up for the occasional ordinary crime, natural disaster or attack by the Doom Syndicate, although the latter were pretty much cleaned up. His little buddy was the only supervillain that really made trouble anymore. He could start to wind down his heroic career, put more time into his music. As he headed down toward Little Sicily (inspired by the sight of the pizza) he started thinking about whether the right appeal to Roxie could make that happen.

He kept his idea to himself all through lunch, the interview and the post-interview pleasantries with the station's staff. Then he offered to walk Roxie to the subway station. When they were finally out in the street, he spoke.

"So. You and the blue guy got something going?"

She wasn't surprised. "I told him you'd figure it out. He thought we could keep it secret from everybody. I do want to keep it as quiet as possible, though." She gave him as much of a pleading look as her dignity allowed.

"Hey, I think it's great that he'd rather make out with you than menace you. And I know you're a grown-up and entitled to run your own love life. So here's the deal I'd be willing to make with him. If he gives up attacking the city, trying to destroy me or run me out of town, and isn't evil to law-abiding citizens, I'll not only keep my mouth shut, I'll quit taking him back to prison. If he wants to continue shaking down lesser criminals or engaging in victmless crime, hey, that's not my beat." Arriving at the station entrance, they turned to face each other.

"I'll tell him," she said. "And thank you."

"No problem. And one more thing. That part about him not being evil to law-abiding citizens? That includes you."

She gave him the combination of eye roll and fond smile that meant she thought he was overdoing it but didn't really mind. "If I need help, I'll definitely let you know."


	2. Chapter 2

Metro Man generally didn't bother with drug use and nonviolent drug dealing among consenting adults. Selling drugs to minors, now, that was another matter. A sudden flood of cheap marijuana and hashish at a high school led to the police calling him in. He spent three days watching Joey Berger, the boy identified as the ringleader who brought the drugs into the school and then distributed them to his little circle of dealers. Actually a big, strapping seventeen year old, he was a boy only in the legal sense. The police background check had revealed no criminal record and a law-abiding middle class Dutch American family background. Still, he wouldn't be the first kid from a good family to turn to crime.

At the end of classes on the third day, Berger left the school on his bicycle and rode alone down to the Metro City Marina, where he locked the bike to a signpost and boarded a yacht, not the sort of private luxury cruise ship that the Scott family owned, with a crew of forty and a formal dining room, but the more modest type of recreational vessel that a doctor or corporate middle manager might buy. Inside the hull, he could see four passenger cabins. Only one of them looked like somebody was actually using it for sleeping quarters. The other three were stacked to the ceiling with marijuana and hashish. So was the hold. In the galley was a backpack, the kind a typical high school boy would carry, also filled with the drugs.

There was one person already aboard, a white-haired but fit white man who looked like exactly the kind of person you'd expect to see in this marina, sitting in the galley looking at his phone. When Berger knocked, he smiled and got up. Metro Man got out his phone and hit Roxie's speed dial.

"Hi, Wayne. What's up?" By the time he heard her voice, the man on the yacht had opened the door for Berger, greeted him warmly and led him into the galley.

"Drug bust. A big one. Metro City Marina, Slip Eight. I'm about to call the police in right now."

"Great. Thanks."

"Don't mention it." By now the two criminals were sitting at the galley table. The boy was counting out money. Metro Man was just about to call his contact on the narcotics squad when the yacht's door seemed to very quietly (a human couldn't have heard it) open and close by itself. As soon as it shut, Megamind became visible just inside it, pulling off the invisibility helmet and holding it out to his right. It became invisible again as he let go of it. Metro Man had seen this before: anything a brainbot in steath mode picked up was automatically included in the stealth field. So there was at least one invisible brainbot there with him.

Was he going to steal the drugs? Rob the dealers? Highjack the yacht, illicit cargo and all? Megamind had been keeping to the terms of the agreement. It seemed like Roxie had been keeping him too busy to attack the city or cause trouble for ordinary citizens. And he wasn't known to sell drugs to minors. If it hadn't been for the minor on board that yacht right now, he'd call Roxie off, fly away and let criminal nature take its course. As it was, he waited, watched and listened.

Megamind approached the galley door with the de-gun drawn. Neither of the humans inside noticed him turning the doorknob. He flung the door open and dehydrated Berger all in one second. The white-haired man stood up and leaned back from the table with his hands up.

"Take the money! Take all of it! Just, please, don't hurt anybody! Oh, god." The man was terrified nearly to the point of tears. In those few seconds, he seemed to have gone from confident late middle age to being genuinely old.

"I shall certainly take it, but that's not what I came for. I want to know where you got the valuable contraband that this vessel seems to be bursting with."

"In Jamaica! I was just down there! You can check my log!"

"Bullshit. Anybody can fake a log entry. But GPS usage records are very difficult to fake, and yours show that you haven't been south of the thirtieth parallel all year. However, you were at a marina on the Quebec side of the St. Lawrence just last week, at the same time as my good friend, Vincente Gutierrez, who had just been down to Belize, his family's homeland, picking up exactly this sort of cargo. You left the marina shortly after he did and, for a brief period, his signal and yours were right on top of each other in the middle of the river. And his stayed there until it went out, while yours continued until it arrived here."

"Okay! I passed him! I saw he was foundering! I know I should have stopped to rescue him, but there was a huge storm! I could barely keep her on course myself!"

"I'm not finished. When he failed to arrive and to pay me his usual protection money, I sent a squad of lakebots out to his last known position. His boat was there, on the bottom, with his corpse, but no cargo. How did that happen?"

"I dunno! Maybe somebody salvaged it after it sank! I had nothing to do with it!"

Megamind adjusted the setting on the de-gun to Demoralize and shot him. The bolt was green instead of the usual blue, and the man did not become cubic. He burst into tears and sank down into his seat.

"How did you kill him?"

"Bleach and ammonia." The man sounded desparing. "I put little cheap glass jars of ammonia inside big cheap glass jars of bleach, all of them inside a cooler with holes drilled in the bottom. When the storm hit, the water got rough, the jars broke and the chemicals mixed and leaked out."

Metro Man, instead of calling, sent a text to his contact in the MCPD narco squad so he could keep listening. _Major haul of mj & hash MC Marina Slip 8 stat_.

"How did you get it onto his boat?" Megamind continued. A reply text came to Wayne's phone. _On our way_.

"That marina, they have stockboys who load the merchandise for anybody who buys a lot, which Gutierrez did. Joey and I went in the back, in the stockroom, when the stockboy did, the one who had Gutierrez's list. I distracted him. Joey cold-cocked him and took his place." It occurred to Metro Man that Megamind might have already decided to kill both perpetrators and was doing this questioning purely for his own curiosity. In that case, it was time to move in. Wayne leaped into the air.

"And after he left the marina, how did you collect the cargo?"

"We followed him. Waited until his boat started to drift. That was how we knew nobody was at the helm. We grappled it and boarded. I took the helm while Joey moved the cargo and blew holes in the hull with Gutierrez's guns."

Metro Man touched down on the deck of the yacht and opened the door. An invisible brainbot hovering next to the door sent a signal to one inside the galley. This second one, still holding the helmet, became visible.

"Mehp rr maa." This was the set of sounds it was programmed to make to warn of Metro Man's approach.

Megamind said "Shit," adjusted the de-gun and dehydrated the old man. He was picking up the cubes when the hero came in.

"I'll take it from here, Megamind," he said.

"What do you mean, take it from here?"

"You've been keeping your nose clean and keeping Roxie happy, so I see no reason to take you in. She'll be out there by now, with a cameraman, waiting for the police, and I really don't think she wants to see you arrested."

"Let me explain something, hero. When someone pays me protection money, they are not just paying me to leave them alone. They are under my protection, and that includes getting revahnge for them if someone kills them."

"I'll take care of that. Send me the co-ordinates of the wreck and I'll work with Canadian authorities to recover your friend's body and develop a murder case. I'll push for the boy to be tried as an adult. Quebec doesn't have the death penalty, but I can push for life imprisonment."

Megamind smiled. He was already thinking of some nasty things that can happen to a person serving a life sentence, and how those things could be made to happen from the outside. It might take a long chain of favors to make them happen in a Quebec prison, but he was resourceful. "In that case, here." He set the cubes in Wayne's palm. "Give them a nice on-camera perp walk." He gestured at the money still on the table. "May I take this for Vincente's family?"

Wayne shook his head. "It won't look right if there's a bust this big but no cash. Take that." He pointed to the backpack. "Just don't sell any of that stuff to minors."

"Don't worry. It'll go straight to my contacts at the various law schools in the city. There's nothing the lawyers of the future like better than a little illegal smoke." He took the helmet from the brainbot, then gestured. "You," he commanded. "Bring that." It picked up the backpack. He put the helmet on and both he and the bot vanished. A few seconds later, the outer door opened. "Ciao, ciao," said his disembodied voice.


	3. Chapter 3

Bar closing time on a Saturday night. One of the most dangerous times of the week. Metro Man generally tried to make it less dangerous by patrolling the streets above the heads of the crowd, letting all the party animals know that he was on the job in case of trouble. Just being there was a deterrent, though not a perfect one. There were still a few fights he had to break up and sexually aggressive drunks he had to separate from the reluctant objects of their attention. Still, the fans in the crowd, and citizens who might not have been enthusiastic fans while sober but certainly were now, would cheer when they saw him. It was really one of his favorite patrols.

It only lasted about an hour. At its end, with only a few stragglers, the dark streets had a peculiar loneliness to them that wasn't like the later hours when the city slept. He drifted just above the street lamps, trying to use the feeling for inspiration to write a song. His phone rang.

"Hi, Roxie. What's up?"

"You're going to laugh. Megamind did something good and he needs you to help him hide it."

"Huh. What's this something good?"

"We were out for a walk just now and we saw someone falling from several stories up. Megamind dehydrated the person in the air." It was widely known in the city that, if something or someone were dehydrated in the air, they'd land safely no matter now far they fell. "But now he refuses to rehydrate them, or let me do it. He said either way would make it obvious that he intervened, and it would ruin his evil reputation. He wants to throw the person back up in the air, rehydrate them and then have you catch them, so you get credit for the rescue."

"Sounds like you're rubbing off on him."

"That or he wanted to show off his marksmanship. It was a pretty difficult shot. Will you do it?"

"Sure. Where are you?"

"Corner of Buchanan and Eighteenth."

"I'm on my way."

When he got there, Megamind was alone, talking into his watch while idly tossing the cube up in the air and catching it with his other hand. "Later, Minion," he said as his old rival landed.

"Hey, little buddy," the hero said as he landed. "Where's Roxie?"

"She went to that convenience store to buy a bottle of water." Megamind pointed down the street, toward a single lighted storefront in an otherwise dark block.

Roxanne was already on her way back. She waved. Wayne waved back.

"So who is this guy, gal, whoever?" he asked, more to make small talk than because he wanted to know."

"I have no idea. I can't even tell you whether this is a guy or a gal, or whether shh-he fell from a window or off the roof. Roxanne saw the movement, gasped and pointed. I drew and fired before I had clearly registered that it was a falling citizen rather than, say, a new super in town with flight or climbing powers who decided to interrupt me when I was taking a private little walk with the woman I love. It was only when the ray struck home and momentarily illuminated the shape even as it shrank that I realized I had perpetrated a rescue. I'm sure you can see how embarrassing this is. The Master of All Villainy does not rescue people. So I appreciate your willingness to take care of this for me."

"No problem. Hey, Roxie."

"Hey, Wayne," she said, just arriving with a liter bottle of water. "Have you thought about how to do this?"

Megamind spoke first. "I thought I'd fling the cube straight up, you'd squish the bottle so it fountains, and Wayne would do the catching."

"Eh, I'd like a little more leeway than that," said Wayne. "Margin for error, you know? Tell you what. why don't I carry you up to the roof. Then I'll float just off the edge with the cube in my hands and Roxie can splash me from there."

"You know, I'd really prefer," replied the villain, "not to be carried by you. Too much like being hauled back to prison. I can summon a couple of brainbots to lift me." He raised his watch to his face again.

"Guys," Roxanne interrupted. "I really think we ought to try to be a little less conspicuous here. Does this building have a fire escape?"

Wayne used his X-ray vision. There was a fire escape on the far side of the building. "This way," he said.

Two minutes later, they stood at the edge of the gravelled roof. Metro Man took the cube in one hand and stepped off into the air. Turning back to Roxanne, he held the cube out toward her. She poured water over it. As it returned to human form, he descended quickly so that the citizen did fall a few feet before being caught. Watching from the roof, Roxanne and Megamind heard a scratchy tenor voice with a New York accent say "Gawdammit! A man can't even commit suicide in this town!"


	4. Chapter 4

The next time, Megamind called Wayne directly. The hero was having dinner at home with his mother when the call came.

"Wayne, I'm calling to rat out a criminal operation," he said. "Normally I would not involve you or any other law enforcement, but there are kids involved here and they don't seem to speak any English. I've identified their language as Estonian, which I can write a little, but it would be better to have someone who speaks it, someone non-scary to go along on the raid, gain their trust, and keep them from being further traumatized by the experience of being in police custody. Will you take care of it?"

"Whoa, slow down, little buddy. You've got to give me some specifics. Like what crime, who, where and when."

"Child prostitution, human trafficking and slavery. Three little girls, elementary school age. Ten forty-four Minnetonka Avenue, apartment seven B. Right now."

Metro Man carried a map of the city in his head. As soon as he had the address, he looked out through the dining room walls, down into the city, directly into the apartment Megamind had named.

In the living room, two men sat in chairs while one leaned against the wall. The seated men had the sweating, fidgety anxiety typical of those hoping to satisfy an intense desire of which they are deeply ashamed. The leaner was a typical thug, clearly there to make sure the other two behaved themselves. In the dining room, another thug stood in a corner while another anxious man talked with a woman who held two frightened-looking little girls, maybe eight and ten years old, by their shoulders. In one of the bedrooms, another man was undressing a third little girl who looked about six. All were white, and the girls were particularly beautiful blondes who resembled each other enough that they could be sisters. Realizing that rape was only seconds away, he said, "I've got it," hung up, and excused himself from the table while he lifted off.

He went in through the bedroom wall, grabbed the pedophile and kept going, knocking the man unconscious by bumping his head on the door as he burst through it. Tossing that first one aside, he proceeded to deliver knockout blows to every other adult in the apartment. The two girls in the dining room hid under the table.

In an effort to look as non-threatening as possible, he sat down on the dining room floor, glanced at them, waved and then ignored them. He got out his phone, made the necessary call to the police, and then called his mother and explained the situation. Sally Scott's social circle was the most well-traveled in the city. If anyone could find the right kind of translator on short notice, she could.

And she did. By the time the paddy wagon pulled up outside the building, a kindly-looking elderly woman was Skyping with the children in Estonian on Wayne's phone. When the police asked him how he'd found out about this operation, he said "Anonymous tip."


	5. Chapter 5

Rain battered at Roxanne's windows. Wild gusts of wind caused it to change direction several times a minute. Wayne, having his usual glass of ice water on the couch, enjoyed looking out into the storm, watching the patterns it made in the sky. It was kind of hypnotic, so much so that he was slightly startled when she said "Cupcakes?" as she set a plate of them on the coffee table.

"Sure," he said, set down his glass, and took one. It was good. Professional bakery quality. "Where did you get these?" He knew she didn't cook.

"They're a present from Minion," she replied. "He sent me the dough already in the little baking cups. All I had to do was put them in the over. He was very secretive about the recipe."

"Hmm." He gazed at the confection in his hand. As a boy, he had played this game with the family cook, looking on the molecular level to see what ingredients had gone into something. "Flour, sugar, ground hazelnuts, eggs, cream-" His super hearing detected a distant scream. "Crab nuggets."

"What's wrong?"

"Some idiot is out there on the lake." He set his bitten cupcake back on the plate. "Why do they do this? It's not like they didn't have any warning."

"If they live to be interviewed, I'll ask them." They both stood up. "I'll wrap these up. We can have them when we get back." Part of the reason they'd been regarded as a couple for so long was that he often went to her apartment to clean up after saving the day. He went over to her balcony door.

"See you at the hospital," he said as he opened it and stepped out.

He loved stormriding, going up and letting the wind blow him around. He had even ridden tornados. That was fun. But now he had work to do and the weather was just a nuisance. Out there in the distance, he could see it. Seven people clinging to debris, with more debris around them. A lot of it, it seemed to him as he flew toward it. The remains of a big enough boat that it should have been okay this close to shore. It wasn't that bad a storm.

The first survivor he picked up was a darl-skinned man in work clothes with tight black curls in a military-style haircut and short Van Dyke beard who wasn't breathing but whose heart was still beating. Holding him face-down, the hero held him around the waist with his legs and squeezed his ribcage to expell water, then flipped him over and performed mouth-to-mouth. The man coughed and then started breathing. Metro Man flew immediately to the survivors who looked the least damaged, two young brown women with their hair in pony tails, also in work clothes, who'd been shouting his name.

"Climb on my back," he shouted above the storm. "Then hold him. He's too weak yet to stay on by himself." They did as instructed, taking the man in their arms when Metro Man handed him up. He paired up the remaining four, telling each pair to hug each other tightly. Picking up one pair in each arm, he flew to shore, setting them down at the emergency room entrance to Metro City General Hospital. Roxie was there, with Hal Steward behind the camera.

M M M

"A kraken? You're sure?" asked Roxanne into the microphone, then tilted it toward Ezekiel Harris, the survivor who had been unconscious.

"Ma'am, I saw the tentacle." He had the accent of an African-American from Alabama, the origin of many southern Michigan families of color. Their destroyed ship, the Margo Lewis, had been registered in Detroit. "Don't know what else could move like that. Wrapped all the way around amidships and just crushed us."

"Did you only see the one tentacle?"

"Well, I wasn't exactly looking around to count."

"So it could have been the body or tail of a lake monster."

"Lake monster. Oh. I guess. See, when I was in the Navy, we studied krakens, but I only had salt water postings, so I never did study lake monsters."

"But, based on what you do know, do you think it could have been a lake monster?"

"Yes."

M M M

After the interview played, Roxanne gave the News at Noon viewers a few facts about lake monsters that the research department had found for her: that they were the largest predator in the Great Lakes ecosystem; that they used to be as big a problem as kraken during the Age of Sail, but attacks had fallen to almost zero when ships began to have motors; that this was the first lake monster attack in the Great Lakes in over a hundred years and only the second in history, worldwide, involving a motorized boat.

As soon as she was off the air, Wayne asked Roxanne to call Megamind and then hand the phone over to him.

"Hey, little buddy. What do you know about lake monsters?"

"I know that they have relatively simple brains. A supervillain with mind control powers, either psychic or technological, could in theory control one. Their great limitation is that they have to stay wet, which is why they only surface during rain. Just a few minutes out of water will kill them. And you couldn't actually ride one. Their skin is too slick. So they're not useful for either presentation or battle, except those that take place underwater. The only thing they're really useful for is destroying watercraft like this one did and menacing swimmers, which they will rarely do on their own initiative. So I'm going on the assumption that this was an attack perpetrated by a villain, one who did not follow correct villainous etiquette by getting my permission first. I'm about to hijack the airwaves to make a short announcement about it. What you might do is listen for reactions of dismay in the listening audience, something along the lines of 'Oh, shit,' with an element of defeat in the tone that distinguishes it from ordinary shock and fear. I know it's a long shot, but if you do get a lead, it will shorten the search for the perpetrator immensely."

"I think it's a longer shot than you realize, but okay. I'll keep my ears open."

"Excellent. Give the phone back to Roxanne if you don't mind?"

He did.

"Hi, sweetie."

"Ollo, my love. Despite what I'm about to announce, I'm not about to wait twenty-four hours to begin my search for this unknown who perpetrated villainy in my domain using a mind-controlled lake monster. I'm starting immediately. What I'd like you to do is find out everything you can about that boat and its crew, owners and anyone else associated with it. Investigate them. You're the best in the city."

"Well, when you flatter me like that, how can I say no?"

Three minutes later, the opening chords of "Bad to the Bone" replaced the scheduled content on all radio and television channels. The song quickly faded, replaced by Megamind's voice.

"Citizens of Metrocity! It is I, Megamind, who demands your attention. As you know if you had the sense to be listening to the news just now, there was a lake monster attack earlier today, which destroyed a ship that had been riding at anchor in the harbor. Since this is not natural lake monster behavior, it is obviously the work of another villain, one who thought to put one over on both the law and me by passing off this crime as an act of nature. But I am not fooled! I am prepared to extend forgiveness and negotiate for a possible alliance if this villain comes to the peninsula within twenty-four hours and displays a pleasing amount of con-treet-ness and submission to me as Master of All Villainy. If not, I will be looking for this villain or team of villains, and when I catch them, they will very much wish I had not. Oh, and by the way, the forces of law and order will also be looking for this villain. If they miss my deadline, it might be better for them if Metro Mahn catches up to them before I do. The rest of you, the common herd who have nothing to do with all this, may go on with your lives." He made the 'cut' gesture and normal programming resumed.

Metro Man heard nothing useful. By then, Roxanne was at her desk, digging into the backgrounds of the Margo Lewis and her crew. She told him to feel free to go back to her apartment by himself. He did. On the flight over, he noticed a middle-aged woman changing a tire on a minivan in the rain while, inside it, two small boys were beginning to fight. He momentarily considered helping her, but realized that nobody was in danger and he really didn't care. When he got there, he put his costume in the laundry and took a good, hot shower. While it was tumble drying, he got out the plate of cupcakes. While he finished his bitten one, he looked through his calls. There was a voice message from his mother.

"Wayne? Do you remember Eldon Setonville? He's a cousin of Eve Setonville who was at Langworth with me." Langworth Academy was the finishing school his mother had attended. The Langworth alumnae network was a major part of her social life. "He's married to a marine biologist, no, not marine, that's the ocean. Whatever you call it when it's lakes instead. She's in a wheelchair. Broke her back diving on their honeymoon and the doctors couldn't fix her spine. So sad. But he's bought her some swimming prosthetics so she could carry on her research. They have an island down near Ludington. And she's missing. She's not on the island. None of their vehicles are gone. That's why he's worried that she might have fallen in and been lost. He doesn't want to involve local Search and Rescue. He was hoping you could fly over there and see if you can find her." Typically for his mother, she didn't mention such useful specifics as Eldon Setonville's phone number, the name of the island, or that of the missing woman. He did remember a woman in a wheelchair at one of his mother's parties. She'd been a little on the chubby side. Long wavy auburn hair. Grey, slightly protruding eyes. Snub nose, narrow lips, a deep tan. He couldn't remember whether he'd actually spoken to her.

He brought up his Social Register app. "Look up Eldon Setonville," he instructed it. The entry came right up, and it contained all the information his mother had neglected to provide. The wife's name was Nigella Marks. She held a PhD in limnology from the University of Michigan. She was thirty-one, twenty-two years younger than her husband. No family connections were listed for her, which meant she wasn't Society. Notipekago Island was their main residence. He fed it to Line of Flight, a specialized app that would calculate flight time for him. Then he called Setonville.

"Metro Man. Thank God." His voice was tenor, with a typical prep school graduate's accent, and shaking with worry. "Listen. I'm very concerned about her, but I also want all this to be kept very discrete, for reasons I'll explain when you get here, if that's all right. The phone system is never really secure."

The rain was tapering off when he landed on the the wide front porch of Notipekago Island's only house, which looked Victorian but was actually, his sense of smell and his X-ray vision told him, only a few years old. Setonville was there, pacing. He had the old-money-family look to him, the narrow nose and long upper lip, and he looked vaguely familiar. Probably Wayne had met him at some point. He seemed, not just very worried, but also ashamed for some reason.

"What I want to explain about Nigella," he explained as soon as the pleasantries were over, "is that the thing we told everyone, about the prosthetics she uses for her research, that's not exactly true. She studies lake monsters. They're very sensitive. They can't stand the vibrations that machinery puts out. With prosthetics, she could never get close enough to them. So what she has is a..." His voice creaked, as if it were being strained just by the effort to say the words. "...a body modification."

That explained the man's nervousness and shame. Body modifications meant medical procedures that put a body outside the range of human normal. They were illegal in most countries, although people who had them done in one of the few places they were legal were generally not prosecuted. More to the point, they were associated with supervillains, professional wrestlers and other disreputable types. Megamind's unusual coloring and huge head were believed to be modifications by much of the public.

"I won't tell anyone who isn't part of the investigation, unless I'm under oath on a witness stand. Don't worry about that. I do need to know, though, what she really looks like, if I'm going to have a chance of finding her."

"Oh. Yes. Come in." They went through the front door, across the great room and upstairs to a study. The whole interior was done in top quality reclaimed wood with an understated nautical theme. Setonville picked up a framed picture off the desk and handed to Wayne without words.

Nigella Marks was a mermaid. She had a fluked tail with pale grey skin, like a dolphin. She was also the woman he remembered from the party. She had been photographed from above, perhaps from a boat, floating on her back, naked and smiling, her hair spreading out in green water. It was obviously erotic. A mermaid fetish might be another reason for Setonville's shame.

"She looks like she can handle herself in the water pretty well," he remarked.

"Yes, but it's not like her to go out when I'm sleeping, without leaving a note, in the middle of a storm. She left her wallet and her phone and her keys. It just doesn't make sense. And I worry that she can get overconfident. Please, can you at least check the shoreline? Make sure she hasn't hit her head on a rock?"

He checked the shoreline and the shallows, both of the island and of the near mainland. He was hoping to be able to save her. She'd be a good person to consult on the destruction of the Margo Lewis. But he found nothing. At sunset, he gave up the search and, with an apology to the worried husband, headed back to Metro City. On the way, he got a call from Roxanne.

"We've got a suspect. Meet at my apartment?"

M M M

It felt less wierd than it should to be in Roxie's home office, bending over Megamind's shoulder, looking at the screen of the computer the blue villain was working at. The website on display bore the title "Ezekiel Shithead Harris" and showed, next to red-on-black text, a photo of Harris doctored so that he seemed to be half swallowed by a badly drawn lake monster.

"Roxanne started from the backgrounds of the victims and their associates. I started from the backgrounds of the world's known lake monster experts. It turns out that one of the experts has a longstanding grudge against Ezekiel Harris, the survivor who thought the lake monster was a kraken. She made this hate site seventeen years ago, when she was fourteen and he was eighteen. It hasn't been updated since she was twenty-one, but she's never taken it down. Once I had this, I dug into the archive of previous versions and found, at the very beginning, a fan site dedicated to this same fellow. This may all be a matter of unrequited love."

"And she's a lake monster expert."

"Mm-hmm, and a certified supergenius." As he spoke, he clicked a few keys and the hate site was replaced by a portrait photo of Nigella Marks.

Metro Man laughed out loud. Then he explained what he'd been doing most of the afternoon. "I was hoping to find her so we could consult her about this crime." They laughed together. Then the blue man got up, opened the door, montioned Wayne to follow, crossed to the railing of the landing, and called down, "Roxanne! You've got to hear this." Wayne joined him. Roxanne was looking up from the great room, where she was unloading a bag of take-out onto the table. The hero repeated the whole story again, including his punch line. This time all three of them laughed.

Then Roxanne got serious. "Do you think the husband knows?"

"Hard to tell. He was so uncomfortable just from having to admit that he was married to a woman who had a body mod that there was no way to tell if he was lying. Hey, that smells really good. Why don't we take a break?"

M M M

"So she hates one of the men who was aboard that boat and she's a lake monster expert," Wayne began over a plate of egg foo yung. "What about the mind control? Could she do that?"

"Mm-hmm," replied Roxanne, spooning a wonton out of her soup. "On top of the degrees she's got, she studied biomedical engineering for a while. Implanted an electrode in the pleasure center of an eel in one of her labs."

"A common freshwater eel," added Megamind, gesturing with chopsticks, "which is the lake monster's nearest living relative. She knows the brain anatomy, the surgical techniques, even the procedure for administering anasthesia to a creature with gills instead of lungs. If you wanted to hire someone to perform brain surgery on a lake monster, she'd be your first choice. And once I've hacked her financial records, I'm sure I'll find that she or her husband has purchased all the necessary materials."

"Huh. Okay. So she's our prime suspect. What do we want to do about her?"

"My first concern," said the blue man, "is that there should be no more lake monster attacks. Not only is it bad for smuggling, it makes me look weak, as if I don't truly have control over the criminal element in my domain. For that, the first step is not doing something about her; it's doing something about the device she implanted in the creature's brain. As long as that device is functioning, anyone bright enough to figure out the system of commands she used and the frequency on which she transmitted them can take control of it. Minion thinks it can be removed without harming the animal, and he sympathizes with it, so I've put him in charge of all three steps: finding the lake monster, capturing it and removing the device. He's modifying the lakebots now, and working out a search pattern for them. Once we have undone her work, the important thing is to prevent her from doing it again. Whether she is imprisoned or dehydrated is unimportant."

"What about making her a subordinate villain, like you mentioned?" asked Roxanne.

"That was before I really understood the sort of person I was dealing with. This is a person who has literally spent her entire adult life and some of her a- _duh_ -less-sence preparing to kill one particular person in one particular over-the-top, fantastical way. And, although this first attempt was quite impressive, she didn't do it to impress anyone. It was enough for her to enact this longstanding fantasy alone, without an audience. She's obsessed, and the obsession will always have more power over her than I do. Any time the opportunity comes up to have another go at killing Harris, she'll abandon whatever assignment I've given her. Thus, I don't think she can be relied upon. So, by all means, apprehend her."

"Little buddy, I hate to admit this, but I'm not at my best under water."

Megamind smiled at this admission of something less than perfection on the part of his longtime rival. "Of course not. The greater mass of water, as opposed to air, slows you down. Your power of flight, which is essentially a power of maneuverablity in three dimensions, is no different from that of a fish or, probably, this mermaid, so it's not the advantage it usually is. She may be a more dextrous swimmer than you are. And, while I know you can hold your breath much longer than a human, you do need to breathe from time to time. And breathing equipment is vulnerable, and would slow you down even more." He had figured all this out many years before and had actually considered a mind-controlled lake monster attack himself. The main reason he hadn't done it was that Minion had absolutely refused to go along. But he wasn't going to mention that. "Believe me, I'm just as dismayed at the prospect of battle in an environment in which the dehydration setting on my gun is of no use. That's why I think Minion should be the one to lead this mission. He has the right instincts. In the meantime, there is still the little matter of finding our perpetrator. Roxanne, I'm assuming you will continue your search through legitimate sources?"

She nodded.

"Roxie," Wayne interrupted. "Speaking of that, do you think you have enough to get a warrant?"

"Not an arrest warrant," she replied. "But I think there's enough to get search warrants to get at her records."

"Great. Let's do that. And one more thing, both of you. I want to listen to recordings of her voice, so I can recognize it if I hear it. Any recordings of her that you come across, send them to me."


	6. Chapter 6

Roxanne and Metro Man went to police headquarters and got the formal investigation started before she went off to do the eleven o'clock news. By the time he got back to the mansion, there was an email from Megamind, with a link to a video of Nigella Marks' PhD thesis defense. (It came to his private email address, not the public one for the fans. He did not ask how Megamind got it.) He played the first half in the background while he got ready for bed, and the second half the next morning. There was a lot of scientific language that he didn't understand, but by the end, he felt sure that he would recognize her voice if he heard it again.

Midmorning, he got a call from Roxanne.

"We've got results. Lots of them. Can you come to the Muni?"

"Sure. Why the Muni?"

"Tell you when you get here."

The Municipal Cinema, popularly nicknamed the Muni, was Metro City's oldest movie theater, a Golden Age rococo relic, resplendent with gilt and burgundy velvet. The owners had recently run into financial trouble and had ceased operating. The marquee said Closed Until Further Notice. As the hero approached the door, Roxanne opened it for him.

"Hey, Roxie. Why are we here?"

"Minion made a hologram of the part of the lake bed where we think her hideout is," she explained as they crossed the lobby. "This place is the right size and shape for displaying it."

"Did they break in here to do this?"

"Megamind says he rented it through one of his shell corporations."

"With stolen money, I suppose."

"Hey, he has his own legitimate income, you know, mostly from patents. So does Dr. Marks, as it turns out. She has five patents for improvements in the technology of using electronics under water. So besides marrying into money, she's a multimillionaire in her own right. And she's spent a big part of it on this crime and this hideout."

As they entered the auditorium, there was a bang and a puff of smoke down in front of the screen; Megamind making one of his dramatic entrances.

"Welcome, Metro Mahn, to the first official meeting of the alliance of good" - he held out his hand to them - "and evil." He put the same hand on his chest and made a little bow. "We are here to proceed with the neutralization of the threat known as Doctor Nigella Marks or, as I call it, Operation Murderous Mermaid." He made squirming octopus gestures with his fingers, then turned his hands palms up. "First, there will be facts and figures from the brilliant Roxanne Ritchi." He gestured toward a small computer workstation set up just to one side of the screen. "Then we shall view the hologram created by our aquatic expert, Minion. And now, if you'll please take a seat, I shall be in the projection booth." The blue alien threw down another smoke grenade. Because he was expecting it this time, the hero easily looked through the resulting smoke to see Megamind scampering out through a set of curtains in the corner.

Roxanne went down to the workstation, took a seat, and put on a headset. Wayne floated into a seat in the middle. The house lights dimmed. Suddenly, he didn't feel right without a drink and a snack. In superspeed, he flew up to the concession stand and helped himself to a Fresca and a bag of salted mixed nuts, leaving the cash for them on top of the locked cash register, then returned to his seat and to normal time.

A split page of text appeared on the screen. There were two lists, composed mostly of technical words that meant nothing to Wayne.

"On the left," said Roxanne, "is a list from Doctor Marks' PhD thesis from eight years ago. It shows the equipment and materials she used to implant electrodes in the brain of a common freshwater eel and then to exert some slight control over the eel's movements. On the right is a list of the same materials and equipment that she personally bought with her credit card last October. Only the quantities and sizes are different."

"A typical beginner's mistake," said Megamind's voice through the speakers, "buying the tools of crime under her real name." As he spoke, the slide vanished and a different pair of lists came up. This time the content was familiar: building materials such as modular wall and roof panels and steel I-beams, in huge quantities.

"Here, again," Roxanne continued, "the list on the right is from Dr. Marks' bank records. The list on the left is from the final public accounting of the cost of the Metro Dome. Again, they're identical, this time including quantities and sizes. She ordered all the material for building herself a hideout the size of a freaking football stadium, plus" - The next slide showed just one list: heavy-duty balloons, various cordage and grappling equipment, and vast amounts of compressed air in cylinders, as well as scaffolding and underwater drills - "all the gear she needed to put it together herself, without heavy equipment. And to power it all, she bought fifty of these." The next slide was a product specification of a thing that looked to Wayne like a propeller fan in a slightly hourglass-waisted tube lying on its side. "These are tide turbines for generating electricity from the flow of water. And she had it all barged out to here" - The next slide showed a map of the Lake Michigan shoreline centered on the port town of Frankfort, where the Betsie River flowed into the lake. An area of the lake about the size of the town, maybe a mile west of the river mouth, was circled in red. - "and dropped overboard. So we know she at least intended to build something down there. What we don't know is where it is and how to approach it."

"That is where you come in," said Megamind. "Any technology I could use to get a closer look at whatever she's got down there, from sonar to lakebots, carries a risk of alerting her. Your X-ray vision could find out all her secrets without causing so much as a ripple in the water. Then for our next step... Minion, take it from here."

Minion's voice came over the speakers. "Metro Man, if you'll please rise up to the ceiling and then look down..." The hero did. Below him, he saw, not the theater seats, but an area of lake bed, the details tiny as though it were all being seen from a long distance. "This is from US Geological Survey data, from five years ago. I also made models of the dome and the turbines." A tiny Metro Dome appeared, the size of his fist, and a row of turbines as big as his thumbs, floating in the air. "Once you've seen them, you can come back here and tell me where they go. I can also create new stuff on the fly, if you see anything unexpected. We also have a physical model of the dome, like a doll house, for the part of the plan that happens inside."

"Minion!" Megamind's voice was faint. Clearly he was away from the microphone. "The Master of All Villainy does not have doll houses! It is an architectural model!"

"Sir, I didn't say it _was_ a doll house. I said it was _like_ a doll house, to give him an idea of the size. Sheesh. Anyway, once we have everything mapped out, then we can add the Invisible Submarine and the lakebots, and we can work out our approach." The submarine that appeared was the size of his little finger, black with so many tiny needle-like spikes that it looked like a puffer fish, surrounded by a dozen lakebots, cyborgs the size of peas, modeled on nautilus moluscs but with longer tentacles and with video-lens eyes facing forward as well as back.

"You've really gone all out with the spikes on the sub," he commented.

"Oh. Those are actually functional. It's the anaesthesia delivery system. I'm real proud of that. You know how lake monsters kill. Any prey they can't swallow whole, they wrap around and crush, like a boa constrictor. So we added this extra skin on the outside of the sub that has hollow needles and a payload of epibatidinic phenylpropene. That's the same drug Dr. Marks uses as eel anaesthetic. The lake monster wraps around the ADL, the spikes pierce its skin and it gets injected with the drug. The bigger the monster, the more needles it compresses and the more doses it gets."

"Cool."

"So will you do it, Wayne?" asked Roxanne.

"Sure. I'll go tonight."

"You don't need daylight?" This was Minion.

"The way I figure it, she won't have made it completely light tight. Some light will leak out, and that will make it easy to find."

"Excellent," Megamind intoned. "Let us meet back here at twelve-thirty, then, after Roxanne gets finished with her broadcast. And one more thing. If you see Dr. Marks, look to see whether her body mod includes gills. It would be useful to know whether she needs air."

MMM

He put on dark-colored civvies for this, a navy blue sweater and new jeans, to avoid being seen and to seem ordinary if he was seen on the surface. He brought a small cooler with him, full of ice and bottled water. On the outskirts of Frankfort, he borrowed a rowboat from a locked-up boat rental place and rowed out, like any other fisherman, though he didn't actually pretend to fish. He just glanced down every so often until he saw the faint glow on the bottom. When he got directly over it, he recorded his location via GPS. Then he rowed a little further, just to avoid being too obvious and to be able to look from an angle that was more comfortable for his neck.

It was kind of surreal how much the underwater hideout looked like the Metro Dome. Same shape, same size, same eight entrances equally spaced around the walls. It stood to the south of the array of turbines, which were arranged so as to harvest the energy of the outflow from the river. A cable ran from each of them to a battery array in the dome's "basement", under the air bubble that filled the upper half of the dome. He also noticed a small difference at the top of the roof: there was a cell phone relay antenna, one of the little ones about a foot and a half long, like the one on the real thing, but aiming downward, into the air bubble. Mounted on the outside of the roof, in the water, was a sonar array. It was connected to the cell phone antenna via a little cluster of computer circuitry. If he had to guess, he'd guess that this thing translated cell phone signals to a sonar equivalent. Was there another similar piece of equipment somewhere on a buoy or something, for translating the sonar signals back to cellular radio and sending them into the system, or was this for local communication underwater? Did she literally call the lake monster on her phone?

Most of the dome's floor was being used for farming, like she was planning to stay down here for years. Above the entrance nearest the shore was a "house" in the sense of an area raised on floors and divided into rooms, although they had no separate roofs/ceilings separating them from the dome as a whole. In the "house" was a dining room, where Nigella Marks, in her wheelchair, and Eldon Setonville were eating dinner.

Metro Man didn't like it when people tried to use him. Setonville's presence here was evidence enough that he'd known where Marks was all along and had only reported her missing so that he could deny complicity in her crimes. He decided that, after the arrests, he'd arrange to have the book thrown at Setonville.

Then he gave the place thorough scrutiny. He did not see any weapons, although he did notice that, in a row of fifteen-foot-tall compressed air bottles, the second one from the end didn't actually hold compressed air. In fact, it wasn't a whole bottle. The back of it was cut away. Inside was a personal submarine, the kind that allowed the occupant almost no movement. It was set into the floor so that it stood vertically, allowing Setonville to simply step into it and seal the door behind him. The bottom of the bottle was cut away, too, as was the floor underneath. A steel rack mounted under the floor was all that kept the little sub from dropping into the water-filled chamber below. The two halves of the rack were designed to drop away. The chamber had only three walls; the fourth side was one of the entrances, open to the lake.

That was Setonville's escape plan. What about Marks? Megamind had asked him to check for gills. If she had them, all she needed was a way into the water.

He'd been told once that he could have saved just as many lives if he'd become a doctor, using his X-ray vision to find tumors. He'd treated the person who said it like she'd insulted him to cover up the truth, which was that looking into living flesh made him queasy. He'd left checking for gills until last because he kind of had to work himself up to it. Bringing his attention back to the boat, he opened the cooler, pulled out an ice cube and swallowed it whole, washing it down with a swig from one of the water bottles. Ice was good for nausea.

He returned his attention to Marks. Looking through her clothes was no big deal. Along her side, the side nearest to him, were three red lines running front-to-back. Maybe gills, maybe scars. He took a deep breath and made himself look deeper.

Gazing into working muscles and circulating blood, his gorge started to rise. The gills were there. So was an array of hardware, embedded circuitry that looked like parts of computers, and wires running through the flesh of her torso. She also had tubes running from her gills to... Good lord. To a kind of mouth with its own vocal cords, tongue and lip muscles around a horizontal slit that he'd thought was her genital opening, nearly invisible in her current seated position. It was intensely disturbing.

He looked away. Stared at the horizon. Breathed through his mouth. Swallowed another chunk of ice. Man, he hated this.

Unshipping the oars, he started rowing back.


	7. Chapter 7

"A true sea voice, like Minion's!" Megamind exclaimed when Wayne finished telling him, Roxanne and Minion what he'd seen. "I wonder if she can echolocate?"

"Assume she can," said Roxanne. "And send radio waves from inside her body, and control the lake monster with either radio or her voice. Prepare for the worst."

"She's right," said Minion. "We need to be practical. Metro Man, if you could help me with the hologram?"

He spend most of the next hour hovering in the Muni's auditorium. He'd put his finger on the spot where a turbine had been on the real lake bed, Minion would click something and a turbine hologram would appear there. Then he'd give an eyeball guestimate of the number of degrees it needed to be rotated and Minion would make that happen. It was slow, tedious work, but it did give an exact count. There were thirty-seven turbines powering the hideout. The other thirteen must be wherever her surgery set-up was.

The dome was already in place, just needing a little adjustment to its position. Once all the turbines were in, Minion began adding the cables while Metro Man flew in through the projection window, past where the robotic gorilla suit sat at a control panel, to the door. He let himself out into the second floor hallway, went left and knocked on the first door on the right.

He heard Roxanne giggle and then call out, "Just a second." It was more like thirty seconds before she let him into the conference room of the small business office above the lobby.

"Hey, Roxie. Hey, little buddy. What have you got?"

Megamind, bouncing on his heels, wearing a proud grin and a wisp of Roxanne's lipstick under his ear (clearly the last remnant of a make-out session from which the couple had hastily cleaned up in the thirty seconds before Roxanne opened the door), gestured at the long table. The architectural model of the dome, roofless and with one side open, took up most of one half. The other contained foam board and foam blocks, cutting tools, tape and glue, paint pens, a 3D printer and miniatures of most of the equipment and furnishings that he'd seen in the hideout. Wayne picked up the tiny compressor, marveling.

"How'd you get these so perfect? I didn't describe them in this kind of detail."

"The brand names were on Marks' credit card record. Roxanne went to the manufacturers' websites and got product specifications and pictures. She was passing them to me faster that I could print them out."

"Cool." He set it down. "Okay. Let me show you how it all goes together."

He spent the next half an hour cutting the shapes of the walls and floors, putting in doors and trapdoors, coloring and labeling and assembling, while the couple looked over his shoulders asking questions. Ten minutes in, Minion joined them. It was strangely like working with the police, planning a raid. That gave him his first idea.

"You know, guys, this might be a job for the police."

"And the Coast Guard," Roxanne chimed in. "It's their jurisdiction. The lake floor is legally public property. This hideout has the same status as if someone secretly built their own cabin in a national forest. The MCPD detective on this case is going to a federal judge in the morning to get the warrants." As usual for cases on which she and Wayne worked together to solve a mystery, the police detective was in the loop mainly to get the official rubber stamps; Roxanne was doing the actual investigation.

"Oh, yeah, the Coast Guard will be even better, because we'll need a whole crew of frogmen. At least two on every entrance, plus a team of at least four to actually go in and make the arrests."

"I don't think human frogmen will be up to the job," said Minion. "Marks has gotta be a stronger swimmer than any unmodified human, and there's no way they're gonna physically stop an Aquastreak Four." He pointed to the hidden personal submarine. "That's a racing sub. It's got some serious power."

"Besides," said Megamind. "There's the whole matter of getting the entrances covered before they realize they're being raided. I'm sure they've got the whole area under continual surveillance. In a hideout that size, with that many exits, they could be gone long before the frogmen are in place."

"Actually, Sir, I've got a couple of ideas along those lines. Can everybody come in the projection room? I'll show you."

The little group followed him to the far room. He sat at the console while telling the three air-breathers to look through the projection window at the hologram. (Wayne floated above the other two, sticking his head out right at the top.) It now had a golden glow radiating from the top of the dome.

"I'm using this yellow light," said Minion, "to represent the dome's sonar detection capability. Its weakness is that distance scatters it and large solid objects like the turbines block it. So the sub could approach it from along the bottom, from behind the turbines." His mechanical hands clicked the keys and the sub appeared, barely visible in the shadows cast by the big machines. "That's if it's not using its own sonar or running its propeller. That's where you'd come in, Metro Man. You could lift it and move it from inside and use your X-ray vision to see where to go. You could get this close." The sub hologram stopped when it had passed three turbines. A smaller shape emerged from it. It looked like a very large specimen of Great Lakes catfish, popularly known as turtle cats because their rounded heads and boxy armor resembled a turtle's shell from the front, though they still had the typical catfish tail. This one was about seven feet long. "All you'd do is drop me off in this little recon vessel. It would take me another hour or two to get right up to it because I'd have to move like a bottom-feeding turtle cat to fool their security. Let me do a little fast forward here." The apparent turtle cat wiggled its way in fast motion among the turbines, up to the dome and then circled it. "I'd go all around the outside, like a catfish that found something really delicious growing at the base of the dome. And in front of each entrance, I'd plant a dehydrated boulder or something. Something big enough to block the entrance. It would be in an airtight container mounted on a stake and connected to all the others by a wire long enough to go all the way around. I'd drive the stakes into the bottom so they wouldn't drift, pay out the wire as I went along, and when I'd planted them all, I'd get out of the way and connect the wire to its battery. That would signal the latches on the containers to open and let in water. The boulders would rehydrate and they'd be trapped." He pushed a button and large, rough rocks rose up to block each entrance.

"Minion, that's great," said Roxanne.

"Nice," said Metro Man. "I could just go out there and push one boulder away when we're ready to make the arrests. The police wouldn't even need to know where those boulders came from. They'd just figure I did it. But this still leaves her able to call the lake monster. What do we do about that?"

"No, no, we want her to call the lake monster," Minion insisted. "Otherwise, how are we going to find it?"

"What we do about it," Megamind chimed in, "is approach openly, with propeller whirling. She'll summon the creature and force it to attack the sub. It will wrap around, get dosed, fall asleep, and then I shall emerge in the octobot."

"The what?" asked Roxanne and Metro Man, almost in unison. Minion clicked the keys. A panel opened in the Invisible Submarine and a little round submersible emerged, aesthetically very steampunk, with eight rubbery tentacle-arms dangling from it. They didn't have suckers, but they did have small thumb-like appendages near the ends.

"Is this thing already built?" Metro Man wanted to know.

"Oh, yes. I've used it many times for, er, various underwater purposes, including repair and destruction of machinery."

"Same with the turtle cat," Minion added. "It has manipulator arms that can extend out the bottom and room for a cargo of small explosives. I've used it a lot. Plus, it can go fast. Well, not really fast, but as fast as a real turtle cat."

"Hmm," Roxanne murmured. "Turtle cats that big are rare. If I knew there was one nearby, I'd want to check it out. Maybe even... Wayne, you mentioned that there were spear guns and SCUBA gear inside the dome. What if they decided to go turtle cat hunting?"

This question lead to a long discussion about Minion's safety on this mission that ended with Metro Man agreeing to simply stay in the sub at the drop-off point and keep an eye on him. If he was in danger, they'd move in and distract the hunter(s) so he could get away. But to minimize that possibility, they'd plan to arrive after Marks and Setonville had gone to bed.

"So we've got Step One and Step Two of this plan," Metro Man concluded. "We trap them in their hideout and neutralize the lake monster -"

"Liberate," interrupted Minion. "This mermaid human came up with an early, primitive version of the same technology that lets me be part of air-based civilization, and she perverted it into this mind control system that almost certainly tortures the animal. And that's on top of the harm she's done to other humans with it. We're going to set it free so it can go back to its natural life."

"Exactly," added Megamind. "There was a time in our history, I'm ashamed to say, when our home planet's greatest empire did enslave large numbers of Minion's people in just this way. It is our intention to deny humans this capability until humans have learned to co-operate with other species instead of coercing them."

"Got it," Wayne continued. "So when we go to Step Three, which is where I bring in the authorities to make the arrests, I'll get agreement beforehand that they won't do anything to the lake monster unless it's necessary to preserve human life. Er, or the life of any member of the team, human or not."

"Thank you," said Minion.

"So here's how I want to set up Step Three. I'll Skype with the Coast Guard station commander and the chief of police this afternoon. I'll call from here and show them, and anyone they're going to assign to this mission, the hologram and the architectural model. I'll ask the commander to have a boat standing by with the frogmen and everything they need to make the arrest. When we've completed Step One, when we don't need the secrecy anymore, then we send up a message buoy to let them know to move in." The message buoy was, in essence, a little bot that would float to the surface, raise an antenna, and send a text message. "Then, after you take care of the lake monster, the sub can surface for a minute or two and let me out, and your part is done."

"Except for bringing me the videos for my story," Roxanne chimed in.

"No problem. Now, if there's nothing else that needs working out, I'm going home and get some sleep. Roxie, you okay getting home?"

"Thanks, but I'm staying at the Lair tonight."


	8. Chapter 8

Watching the (currently visible) Invisible Submarine rise from the harbor, Metro Man's first thought was _I think this is the spikiest thing he's ever come up with_. It was like a porcupine. The needle tips of the spines glittered in the reflected light from the docks, but at three-thirty a.m., the few humans who might have seen them would probably figure they were reflections of stars.

A hatch popped open near one end, revealing the lighted interior. He heard a faint whistle, first a high note, then a higher one, then the first one again. He was being piped aboard. Floating over, he squeezed himself down the narrow opening.

The ceiling of the compartment was so low that he couldn't actually stand up in it. He had to crouch down a little to close the hatch. The space was also narrow and short. He guessed that it didn't even take up a quarter of the sub's length. And of course it was filled with screens, blinky dials and banks of switches and buttons.

"Welcome aboard, Metro Mahn!" proclaimed Megamind from the pilot's seat. He was wearing, instead of his usual cape and shoulder array, a ridiculously ornate steampunk sea captain's jacket with blue lightning bolts on the sleeves and epaulets. "Please excuse the close quarters. I am usually alone in here." He swiveled back to the controls. The sub sank down a little, then moved forward, out of the harbor. "Since you can't stand, have a seat on the ladder if you don't want to hover. Minion? Everything ship shape in there?"

"Fine, Sir." The ichthyoid's familiar voice came from speakers in the ceiling. Metro Man glanced through the aft wall. On the other side was another air-filled compartment. In it was the Octobot, its tentacles in vertical coils around the central pod. Beyond that, in a water-filled compartment, was Minion inside the mechanical turtle cat. It moved around the compartment so realistically that, if he hadn't known what he was looking at, he'd absolutely have believed it was a real Great Lakes catfish.

"Good, good. I'll be taking her out of the harbor and as far as the Man-ee-towz under her own power, but then I'm going to shut down everything except basic life support and let you take over. Sound good?"

"Fine," said the hero, perching on a rung of the ladder.

"I'm putting my music library on the starboard screen. Why don't you pick out something? We won't be able to play anything once we shut down the power, so we might as well enjoy it now." The starboard screen was a touch screen. There was a playlist named "Blues and Blues Rock" that had some Elvis in it. Wayne put it on shuffle. He was amused when the first song up was "Catfish Blues" by Mose Allison.

Just off Little Manitou Island, the sub stopped.

"Now we should turn off our phones. We don't want to emit any electrical fields at all. Metro Mahn, if you would kindly take over support and steering, I shall shut down the machinery." As soon as he got his phone squared away, the hero braced his feet and one hand on the ceiling and floor, grasping the ladder with the other hand for maximun maneuverability.

"Got it," he said. The engine shut down, then the music, then (to his surprise) the fans and most of the lights. Panels in the ceiling, glowing the same green as glow sticks, were the only illumination. He felt the weight of the sub settle on his hands. Megamind slid two light-tight shades, like eyelids, down over the two halves of the sub's "windshield". It was eerily quiet.

"Little buddy, did you just shut down the air circulation?"

"I switched it over to manual. While you are moving us, I shall be pumping the bellows that keeps it going." The blue captain pulled on a stick set into the floor. There was a faint sighing of air in tubes. He paused a moment before pushing it back. "Hear that? Sounds much more like a living creature's respiration than like machinery, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, that should fool anybody who's listening for a machine. What about our voices?"

"Shouldn't be a problem if we keep it down. Can you see all right?"

"No problem. Ready?"

"Ready."

Slowly and carefully, so as not to tear the metal, Metro Man started the sub moving forward in the water. He could see the underwater dome and the turbines in the distance. Nearby, there were some interesting things under the water. He saw a sunken cabin cruiser on its side, almost completely covered with zebra mussels. There were stands of water weeds like small forests and schools of small fish, the perch and bluegill that one of the family's servants had taught him to fish for. It was pretty cool.

Then as they got away from the island, the water got deeper and the features fewer. In about fifteen minutes, he was bored enough to try to start a conversation.

"So. You and Roxie getting along okay?"

"Wonderfully. I hesitate to say this for fear of jinxing myself, but this is the happiest I've ever been in my life. She is utterly awesome."

"No problem with her being good?"

"Keeping a good woman happy has actually been just the excuse I needed to give up certain activities I was getting tired of, anyway. Although I do miss the battles. That's why I'm so disappointed that our quarry has turned out not to be a rival supervillain whom I can count on for witty banter and titanic clashes in the streets."

"Yeah, she turned out to have a pretty ordinary motive." Something new occurred to the hero. "She's no threat to you, but you're not doing this because she didn't follow supervillain protocol. You're doing it because she's abusing lake monsters."

It was Minion who answered. "You're damn right! This is past evil. This is into disgusting."

"In a way," said Megamind, "it was a useful thing that she announced herself with this attempted murder. The Fish and Wildlife Service might have taken years to even notice her. In fact, if she had made the attempt someplace other than Metrocity's harbor, they'd have been looking for a lake monster that somehow chose to attack on its own initiative. They'd probably have consulted her, and she could have kept them chasing wild geese until the case got cold."

"There was a Fish and Wildlife guy on my Skype call along with the police chief and the Coast Guard commander."

"Were they impressed with our visual aids?"

"Yeah, a lot. Kind of wierded out that I was working with you, though."

"I hope," said the blue alien, looking over his shoulder with a worried expression, "you didn't tell them about Ms. Ritchi and me."

"Hey, credit me with some discretion. I said that you and Minion found this whole implanted mind control device thing really creepy and gross and that's why you were willing to work with me on this."

"Which is entirely accurate and yet reveals nothing problematic. Thank you. Will they be providing the backup you asked for?"

"Yeah. No problem. They'll be standing by, starting at dawn."

MMMMM

It was a long trip, and then a long wait after they dropped Minion off. They talked about Roxanne, movies (they were both fans of the movie _Jailhouse Rock_ , though for completely different reasons), criminals that they had both battled, and the state of the economy. It wasn't an entirely comfortable conversation, given that they were carefully staying away from anything really personal, and that they were both, at Roxanne's urging, making an effort to rein in their natural inclination to boasting, insults and one-upmanship in the presence of their rival. As a result, they were still on speaking terms when the hero saw the boulders rise. Megamind raised the shades and powered up, including the music, the message buoy, and a sonar call to the school of lakebots standing by just under the surface about half a mile away. By prearrangement, he left the engine in neutral, scampered through the door into the next chamber, got into the Octobot and started its chamber filling with water. Metro Man again took over the sub's movement. As he moved it up from behind the turbines and forward toward the dome, the hero used his X-ray vision to watch their quarry and keep up a running description of their actions.

"They're getting out of bed... going to their computers... They've got us on one of their cameras... Marks is singing into a microphone. Setonville is getting into scuba gear... He's got a spear gun and a net with, I'm guessing, weights around the edges... Maybe they're expecting to take prisoners."

"Or souvenirs." Megamind's voice came through the speakers.

"Heh. Okay, Setonville has a trapdoor open... Now he's diving... Now he's staring at the boulder. Looks completely floored... He's getting back out of the water... He just took out his mouthpiece and he's shouting... She's looking worried but she's still singing... Now he's going to his computer..." The sonar pinged. He glanced down at the screen, then outward in the direction it indicated. "Lake monster at two o'clock."

The creature swam with a side-to-side movement exactly like that of the little eels in the City Aquarium. It was about as big around as the sub would be without its spikes, and four or five times as long. There was a long moment of Wayne holding up the sub, watching it approach and listening to Elvis sing "Heartbreak Hotel". He really hoped the song wasn't an omen.

Then it was on them. He raised the sub so it would pass underneath. Looking down through the deck, he could see a rectangular metal box embedded in the back of its head, with an antenna sticking out. He found himself agreeing with Minion: this was obscene. As it made its encircling loop, he adjusted the sub's position so that it would wrap around the far end and not block the Octobot's exit hatch.

It began to tighten, impaling itself on the spikes. Wayne felt its weight added to the weight of the sub. For a moment, he really wished he was wearing scuba gear, just in case the creature did enough damage to make the sub lose all its air.

The next compartment quit taking in water. "On my way out," said Megamind. The hatch opened and the Octobot swam out. At the same time, the lake monster went limp. As it unwrapped so that it was literally dangling from the sub, Megamind brought the bot around behind its head. Six tentacles grasped it, two around the head holding the jaw shut, the other four around the upper body. The remaining two, controlled by Megamind with waldoes, pulled a wrench and a screwdriver from a compartment on the side of the bot and got to work.

It took only a few minutes for him to gut the machinery, crushing the components as he pulled them out, letting almost all the fragments drop to the lake floor, although there were a few he tucked away in the side compartment. Finally he closed up the box, now without its antenna, and gently released the head. Swimming upward until the bot floated above the curve of the creature's body that lay draped over the sub, he used the tentacles to grasp it. Without prior discussion, Metro Man saw what was needed and dropped the sub a little in the water so that the creature's head and tail lifted away from it and the Octobot was easily able to lift it off the spikes. It bled a little, but the tiny holes quickly closed up. Wayne moved the sub out of the way of any thrashing around it might do when it woke up.

The Octobot held the lake monster for most of "Weed Smoker's Dream" by the Harlem Hamfats and about half of "Voodoo Chile" by Jimi Hendrix. Then, as it started to move on its own, Megamind let it go. It fled, starting to swim before it was fully recovered, gathering speed as it gained distance.

"Phase Two completed!" the blue alien called out gleefully. "As soon as I'm back aboard, we can pick up Minion and then turn this operation over to the forces of-" The sonar pinged again. "What's that? Can you see what it's detected?"

Metro Man glanced at the screen, then outward. What he saw dismayed him.

"Hey, little buddy, remind me why we assumed that Marks only controlled one lake monster."


	9. Chapter 9

The second lake monster was immense, almost whale-like. Its hide, patterned in dull blues and greens, might have been nearly invisible if it was lying still on the lake floor, waiting in ambush for prey, as the really big ones usually did. Megamind turned on the sonar navigation in the Octobot.

"It's fucking huge!" he proclaimed.

"Looks like it could swallow the sub whole."

"That actually sounds optimal."

"What do you mean?"

"The needle spikes should work just as well from the inside. You did a fine job of holding the smaller one balanced on the sub while I freed it, but holding this one the same way may not be possible. Holding it up from inside, after you've been swallowed, will be much more certain. Besides, it will expose it to more needles. We're going to need a big dose for this one."

"You're saying I should actually... let it swallow me, sub and all?" If looking into living flesh was gross, being completely enclosed in living flesh was going to be a nightmare.

"Yes, yes. Didn't I make that clear? I'll open the jaws and let you out when I'm done."

"It's clear. It just doesn't sound like fun. Hey, have you got any ice aboard this thing?"

"As a matter of fact, we do. We've got a sort of lake monster first aid kit in an overhead compartment. Some of its components have to be kept cold."

"I see it. But it looks like the access hatch is from the outside."

"Oh, that's right. Listen, if you really want ice, feel free to tear a hole in the ceiling. You know how to avoid the wiring and such."

"Thanks, little buddy." In the time it took them to have this conversation, the creature was almost on them. He got the sub alligned so that it would pass between the monster's teeth easily, so it wouldn't try to chew. He opted for a tail-first position. It just seemed psychologically right. As he was tearing a hand-sized opening in the ceiling and then in the tank holding the ice and pharmaceuticals, the enormous jaws opened, creating a powerful current that flowed directly into the cavernous mouth. He let the sub go with it, into the great wide maw, while he held it up with one hand and fished out an ice cube with the other. The mouth closed, cutting off the dim natural light, leaving only the sub's own lights as it jammed itself into the back of the throat. The current song was "Dazed and Confused" by Led Zeppelin. Its dissonant descending repeated bass pattern was too damned appropriate. He swallowed the ice quickly, then got both hands on the ceiling and braced as, once again, a lake monster's weight was added to the sub's. And added. And added. The first lake monster had been like holding a school bus. This one was like holding a railroad train with thirty or so cars. Most of the weight was on the tail, of course. He felt rather than saw that the flesh impaled on the last spikes on the end of the sub was beginning to tear. Not wanting to injure the creature any more than he could help, he let the end sag so that the weight rested on the place where the inside of the upper jaw made contact with the front of the sub, just above the front windows. This had the effect of tipping the whole sub including the tank so that a steady stream of cold water and ice cubes poured out of the hole onto his head. _And it's not even hailstorm season_ , he found himself thinking. He swept his cape around with one hand and caught a few in it, just in case he needed them, but once he had the load stablized, found that he didn't. The music helped. He just kept his attention focused on the next song, and the next.

Abruptly, for no clear reason, the great body moved sideways.

He swallowed another piece of ice and made himself look through the lake monster's body while giving it as little attention as possible. At first all he noticed was the Octobot struggling to stay on the back of the head.

Then he saw the great cloud of bubbles rising up from the dome, which had suffered a change of shape. Marks and Setonville had blown its top, he realized. They'd cobbled together some kind of explosive charges and destroyed their roof. The force of the blast was what had moved the sedated monster. Even as he watched, the small shape of the mermaid slipped over the broken wall and swam off in the direction of deeper water, armed with a spear gun.

On the lake floor beside the dome, Minion was mostly sheltered from the force of the explosion. Watching the Octobot working on the second lake monster through screens that linked to the turtle cat's external cameras (not just the two that mimicked natural eyes, but tiny ones mounted all over the exterior), he saw everything move sideways and realized what must have happened. Moments later, he saw Marks swimming away. Knowing that no one else was in a position to follow her, he adjusted the artifical swim bladder. The turtle cat rose from the bottom.

Metro Man did not see him go. He didn't notice the lakebots arriving. He was at the end of what he could stand. Shutting his eyes, he swallowed one more ice cube and breathed through his mouth, focusing his attention on "Matchbox" by the Beatles, then "Blues in the Night" by Cab Calloway, then the first few bars of "Invitation to the Blues" by Tom Waits. At that point, he felt light on his eyelids and looked up. Lakebots were holding the jaws open.

Trusting Megamind to have a firm hold on the outside of the head, he backed up the sub so that its spikes slid gently out of the monster's flesh, then maneuvered it out into open water. He felt, irrationally, like he could breathe more easily. He looked around.

The Octobot and about thirty lakebots were supporting the unconscious lake monster, some with nets under its belly. Inside the broken dome, everything was still. A long moment of concentration allowed him to see Marks, still swimming deeper. There was movement behind her that he identified, after a moment, as the turtle cat. Roughly southwestward, Setonville in the Aquastreak Four was motoring toward Notipekago Island. And from the southeast, he saw what seemed to him at that moment the most beautiful sight in the world: a Coast Guard cutter with human law enforcement personnel aboard, coming to take over for him.

Feeling celebratory, he touched the screen with the music app and created an all-Elvis playlist. There were only seven songs, but he figured he wouldn't be in the sub that much longer.


	10. Chapter 10

The second lake monster left quite a wake when it fled. The sub was flung end-over-end in the water. Wayne moved so he was just behind the pilot's seat and spread out his cape to protect the control panel from flying ice cubes. Even before he got it righted in the water, he heard Megamind's voice interrupting "Love Me Tender," sounding a bit panicked.

"Metro Man! I've lost track of Minion! Can you see him? Is he all right?"

"Relax, little buddy. I just saw him. He's tailing Marks."

"Tailing..." the anxious tone switched over to indignation. "Did you just make a play on words?"

"Yeah, but it's also true. She's headed roughly west-north-west. He's following her in the turtle cat and it doesn't look like she's noticed him."

"Ah. That fantastic fish. He'll find where she hides and then he'll send up his message buoy and we'll go in for the mopping up. In the meantime, why don't we surface and get some fresh air?"

"Great idea." He started moving the sub upward.

"Whoa whoa whoa waiiit! Let me come aboard first."

"Sorry."

He met the Octobot halfway. They didn't speak again until it was on board, while waiting for its compartment to drain.

"That was fun," the villain observed. "Not as good as a real battle, but it had some exciting moments. Did you enjoy yourself?"

Wayne took a moment to think before he answered. He wasn't planning to lie, but he didn't want to be too exact about something that Megamind might, if the truce broke down, be able to exploit as a weakness.

"Little buddy, if I never have anything to do with gigantic veterinary surgery again, that'll be just fine with me."

"Really. After all the injured people you've rescued, I would have thought you'd be used to wounds and bleeding."

"Maybe it's like what med students go through. Even the ones who have been on ambulance crews will sometimes get an upset stomach the first time they watch surgery. But they get used to it." There. An implication that this might be temporary, so it was no use as a weakness.

"That's what you wanted the ice for. I see. Well, I hope it worked for you. And I hope you didn't leave too big a hole in my ceiling." Wow. That was actually a little bit... gracious.

"Not too big. I did forget to close it up, though, and now there's ice on the floor. You should watch your step."

"Will do. And thank you for the warning."

Wayne thought for a moment about the way Megamind usually reacted to losing his footing unexpectedly: the windmilling arms, the bulging eyes, the screaming. He had seen the blue man step on something that moved out from under him many, many times and it had never before occurred to Metro Man to warn him. But now the words of warning seemed natural. Megamind had made the transition in his mind from problem to person.

Then he remembered that they weren't actually done.

"Listen. The Coast Guard cutter is on the way and they'll be expecting to go in and make the arrests here. I'm going to have to explain to them that we still have some pursuit to do."

"Oh, right. And our quarry has split up. Hmm. How about this? If you could arrange with the human authorities for me to lead them to Marks, you could fly after Setonville and collect him when he comes to the surface."

"Setonville is most likely headed back to that island he and Marks own. That's in the Ludington PD's jurisdiction. I can have Lieutenant Schulman fax Ludington his warrant and they can pick him up." Schulman was the MCPD detective on this case.

"You've been there. Does he have other boats? Because he could simply get into a boat with more long-distance capability and motor off for Canada - or, if he's got a sea plane, for someplace he can't be extradited from."

"Let me think... Wait a minute. Just because he didn't have a plane when I was there doesn't mean he hasn't got one now. Let me try to get a look at the place." Metro Man looked for the Aquastreak Four first, and started to worry when he didn't see it where he expected it to be. Then he looked down along the bottom and it all became clear. "They've got a refueling station on the bottom about five miles from here. That's what he's headed for." He looked further. "They've got a series of them, one every few miles all the way to the island. And, no, there isn't a sea plane there."

"Which doesn't mean he's definitely going to the island. He may have a sea plane stashed at Arcadia or Manistee or one of those little vay-cate-eye-on towns." Megamind considered for a moment. "I can't see any way to nab him other than you tailing him from the air and arresting him when he steps ashore."

"I don't mind." It was the understatement of the year. Some time in the air followed by a simple apprehension sounded downright refreshing.

"Which means I must be the one to lead the Coast Guard people to Marks when Minion's message comes in. Can you explain that to them?"

"Sure. Actually, how about this: when you get back in the pilot's seat, I'll look for Marks. When I see her, you can use me as a compass needle. Turn the sub until I'm looking straight ahead. Then surface and let me out but keep her on this same heading and you'll be ready to lead the authorities to Marks even before you get Minion's signal."

"Excellent idea. Speaking of signals, we should turn our phones on."

MMMMM

When Megamind brought the sub to the surface and opened the hatch, Metro Man flew up like the cork out of a champagne bottle and went straight into aerobatics. It was so good to be out of that confined space! He put his arms out and started spinning, then twisted into a somersault, then widened it in a series of larger and larger loop-the-loops, feeling downright euphoric, before he got back to business and headed for the cutter.

There was a small crowd waiting for him on the deck: all the law enforcement personnel who'd been in on the videoconference with him; several more people in wetsuits and regular Coast Guard uniforms, some of whom were filming him on their phones; and Roxie with a KMCP News crew. Her cameraman (Al? Cal?) was also filming, and there was a woman with a boom mic. As he touched down, the cameraman backed up and the sound woman moved in closer. He raised his hand in a polite fending off gesture, the sort that might be read as a wave by people who didn't know the context.

"Interview later," he said. "This part's off the record." The sound woman pulled in her gear, but the camera guy kept filming and Roxie's thumbs were busy on her phone, taking notes. He turned to the uniforms and explained the situation. He ended by pointing out the spiked submarine, which sat at the surface a couple of hundred yards off the port bow. Lieutenant Schulman and the ship's captain agreed that he could bring Setonville to the cutter to complete the arrest process. As the captain gave the order to turn the ship, he lifted off again.

He located Setonville having a snack in the second refueling station on the line, and that was a bit of luck because, when he got back in his personal sub, he headed, not for the island, but for Arcadia, the next town south along the coast. He surfaced in a marina in Arcadia Lake (the town's harbor) where there were three sea planes parked. When he opened his hatch, the first thing he saw was the hero's fringed boots, pretending to stand (but actually hovering with the soles of his feet just resting) on the slope of the little sub's nose.

"Metro Man!" he exclaimed. "Have you found her? Is she all right?"

"Listen, pal. I was on that sub with the spikes. I saw you and her leave that football stadium hideout, which means you're at least guilty as an accessory to the crime of building that thing without a permit. Now-" The sub had an ignition key like a car. The hero reached past the astonished suspect and pulled it out. "Shut yourself in. This vessel is evidence and you're under arrest and you'll have a more comfortable flight if I carry you inside it."

MMMMM

The spiked submarine and the cutter were already underway when he got back. Floating in the air above the deck, holding the Aquastreak Four with one hand, he called the captain and asked where he'd like it set down. The captain had him take it to an area of the deck where there were tie-downs, then hold it while sailors arranged blocks for it to rest on. He had to set it down nose first, which meant Setonville was almost standing on his head, and then lower the tail. While the cops rousted Setonville out of it and arrested him, and a pair of Coast Guard masters-at-arms escorted him to the brig, Metro Man turned the key over to the captain (who, along with several crew members, seemed fascinated by the racing sub), posed for selfies with some crew members, and signed a few autographs. If their underwater escapade was Megamind's idea of fun, this was his.

With no more to do until the time came for the second arrest, he decided to look for Roxie and see if she wanted to do an interview now. He found her in a borrowed cabin, looking at her laptop screen and practically squeeing.

"You guys got me such great footage!"

"That'll be Megamind's doing. What did he send you?"

"Look." She clicked a few keys as he came up behind her. On the screen was a dim, greenish view of Marks' and Setonville's huge hide-out. Suddenly a line of lights appeared, just where the roof joined the walls. The whole dome began to break up. Then the view was disrupted by a wave of foam that made everything wild and blurry for a few seconds. When it cleared, the hide-out was visible again, its dome broken and the top of its wall ragged, with bubbles rising dramatically. After a moment, Marks was seen escaping. He hadn't even been aware that there was filming going on.

"The explosion lasted longer than that. He must be editing as he sends it to you. Wait. How is he doing that from the sub?"

"Satellite link."

"Cool. What else did he send?"

She opened a file. They watched each lake monster attack and get sedated, then a little bit of surgery (any specific look at the machinery to be removed from the head was edited out), then each creature's recovery and departure. She opened another file, showing the approach to the dome and then the approach of the first lake monster. It was interrupted by his phone ringing.

"We're at the message buoy," the captain told him. "Could you come to the surface dive support vessel and describe the situation under water for our frogmen?"


	11. Chapter 11

Minion lost sight of Marks within a hundred yards, but it wasn't necessary to see her. She had a distinctive sonar voice, a wail rather than the ping of electronic sonar rangefinders. He'd gotten a read on it when she first emerged from the ruined underwater dome. Now, every time she used it, she told him where she was, or at least what direction to go to follow her. She seemed to be staying on a consistent header, eighteen degrees north of due west and slightly downward. He didn't need to use his own sonar, relying instead on his better-than-human night vision to keep track of his immediate surroundings.

Gradually he fell behind. He'd called the turtle cat "fast", and it was, compared to his own free-swimming speed, but Marks was built like a dolphin. He had no hope of keeping up with her, but he figured he didn't need to. The sound of her sonar voice got fainter and fainter but never disappeared. After a while, it started getting stronger, indicating that she'd arrived at her destination and was just moving around locally.

Following her steadily deeper into the lake, he came into an area that was lighted. Just before entering it, he released the signal buoy, then returned to the bottom and to turtle cat feeding behavior. (The "mouth" really could pick up things if he told it to, so he had it pick up a little sushi on the hoof.) He began to pass structures on the bottom; turbines at first, a small building, and then a thing like a huge, long hammock about three stories tall and as wide as a four-lane road, but held up by two rows of posts along its sides instead of one post at each end: her surgical sling. At one end was a rack of lights, tools and supplies, including a porcupine-like blob that was clearly an anesthesia dispenser. Beyond it were more turbines, a larger building and something moving in the distance. As he worked his way gently down the slope, the movement in the distance resolved into Marks, swimming toward him pulling a net bag bigger than she was, and a lake monster following her. Every so often, she would reach into the net bag, pull out a carp about twice Minion's size, and fling it toward the monster, which would lunge for it, following her, while she moved on a little way. She was luring it toward the sling, he realized. She was going to implant a mind control device in its head immediately.

Minion snarled. A plan unfolded in his mind. He maneuvered the turtle cat under the end of the sling that Marks was approaching. _The perfect spot for an ambush. Now to load the spear gun... Oops. Oh-oh._

The spears had all been taken out to make room for the dehydrated boulders and the system for setting them in place and rehydrating them. The turtle cat was unarmed.

 _But I'm not. And I'm not going to pass up my one chance to stop this before it happens._ Raising his vehicle a little off the lake floor, he activated the underbelly ejection system. In seconds, he was swimming free. Leaving it floating just enough above the lake bed so he could get back into it quickly, he swam right up under the edge of the sling, dimmed his escas, and waited.

The lake monster moved in spurts. It would dash toward a carp, swallow it, and then pause for a moment before Marks tossed it the next one. He waited for the spurt that brought its head and the first third or so of its body over the sling, between the two rows of posts. Then he swam up out of his cover, toward the monster. The next thing Marks fed it would probably be the anesthesia dispenser, so he only had this one moment to disrupt her plan in the only way he could. As the creature paused, he swam right up to its side. "Sorry," he whispered, and bit.

The deep, vibrating bass scream preceded the start of the thrashing by a second or two. Then came the buffeting as the enormous body writhed in the water, trying to shake him off. After a few seconds, he let go, timing it so that he'd be thrown a safe distance away. By the time he gained control of his position in the water and looked back, it had knocked down about two-thirds of the sling and was still thrashing. As he watched, it took down a few more poles. It was about to reach the rack when the sound of an engine came from the small building that was now below and off to his right. The creature fled.

From the building came a mechanical sonar ping. Marks was looking for the intruder who had sabotaged her plan. After a moment, she emerged from the building. Getting away from her was the part of the plan he hadn't thought out. He couldn't outswim her. If she tried to take him with her bare hands, he could bite her, but against the spear gun which she still wore across her back, he was defenseless. The turtle cat with its armor was somewhere under the wreckage of the sling. As she swam toward it, he figured his best bet was to keep her from noticing him at all.

Moving his extremities as little as possible, he emptied his swim bladder the hard, slow way, by absorbing the gas back into his bloodstream instead of releasing it as a bubble that might potentially attract her attention. Gradually, as Marks dragged back the fabric of the sling to uncover the turtle cat, scrutinized it, touched it, tried to turn it over and failed, he sank into the chaos of debris and small life on the lake floor. Abruptly, she rose and swam away to the larger building downslope. He took the opportunity to eat two of the little bottom feeders. A few minutes later, she emerged from it and swam back to the turtle cat, carrying a pry bar as long as herself and wearing a miner's lamp, not the full helmet but just a light held to her forehead with straps. _Oh, crap_. Using a fallen pole for the fulcrum, she levered the turtle cat upside down. The underbelly door was still open. She took the lamp off and used it as a flashlight to look around inside. _There was never anybody in there! It was remote controlled!_ Minion willed her to decide.

For a second, she hovered in the water, facing downward toward the upside down turtle cat. Then she arched her back, rising into a slow backward somersault, her gills wide open to let her sea voice sing, doing a full sonar scan. She was searching for him.

Minion wasn't sure whether he could control the turtle cat at this distance, but he felt like he needed to try. From the antenna on top of his head, he transmitted the series of signals that activated its manipulator arms and "mouth". She looked in his direction. _Oh, crap. She can hear that_. The next second, the manipulator arms, in obedience to his signals, reached up behind her, snatched the miner's lamp from her hand, and brought it to the "mouth". Then the "mouth" crushed.

Her eyes got wide. She turned over and reached toward the "mouth". Her hand came away with the straps attached to a fragment. Flinging it away, she used the pry bar to methodically smash up as much of the turtle cat as she could, jamming one end in through the underbelly door to destroy the internal controls. Minion hunkered down as low as he could, sighing at the loss.

Then she turned in a fury, squinting at the area of the bottom where he held perfectly still. A careful kick of her tail brought her forward, squinting her little human eyes in the dim light of the lake bottom, studying the accumulation of fallen land plant matter, lake life living and dead, and the detritus of human civilization, looking among them for whatever could have sent that signal. Minion disciplined himself not even to follow her with his eyes, so that they wouldn't catch her attention by moving when she moved. He left them aimed in her direction, but unfocused. Two identical, blurry mermaids approached him gradually, examining every square foot of the surface. Closer, closer, and then her eyes might have passed him, he couldn't be sure... And then suddenly they returned to him, exactly to him. With a look of rage, she raised the pry bar over her head with both hands, preparing to smash it down.

In that one moment, he realized that there was movement beyond her. A net was coming down. A big one, with a wide enough mesh that he could slip right through, but it would hold her securely. And he could hear, faintly, the sonar voices of lakebots. He took in all of it in a second, while keeping his attention on Marks.

He waited until the pry bar was actually on the downswing before flattening himself and darting sideways, just enough to dodge the blow. She struck again. He dodged again. She'd have been quicker, might have nailed him, if she'd thrust like a fencer instead of bashing, or dropped the bar in favor of the spear gun, but in her anger she was thinking like a human, thinking in terms of the way things move in air. She raised it again and it caught in the descending net. She looked up, shocked, then glanced around for an escape. The net spread around her for ten feet in every direction. Lakebots held down the edges. Frogmen followed it, Coast Guard rank patches on the upper arms of their wetsuits. Behind them, thank all the evil gods, was the spiked submarine. Megamind was at the controls. As Minion slipped out through the mesh, the look of worry on the blue face changed to a smile.


End file.
